Written circa 1978
Published in shortened version in De Kade (Rotterdam),
1997

Stuart Sherman presented his first performance
piece under the slogan "Stuart Sherman makes a Spectacle of
himself" and has at times used Stuart Sherman Spectacles
as an overall title for his work. There is clear irony in these
characterizations. In their lack of theatricality and often
miniature scale, Sherman's object-manipulations are, on the
surface, distinctly unspectacular. Moreover, his rapid,
uninflected performance style contains none of the exhibitionism
suggested by "spectacle". The irony, however, is
neither gratuitous nor self-deprecating. In asking his audience
to reconsider the nature of "spectacles" Sherman is
pointing to the paradoxical nature of his performances.

-I-

A Stuart Sherman spectacle begins with the
presentation of a heterogenous set of objects placed either along
the side of the performance space or, in smaller scale shows,
massed within a briefcase which Sherman opens as the spectacle
begins. During the briefcase shows the performance area consists
of one or more folding tables.

A spectacle is organized into a series of
discrete object manipulations. At the beginning of each
manipulation, Sherman glances at an index card; he gathers
several objects, places them within the performance area and
proceeds use them in a highly structured series of actions. A
manipulation might also contain gestures independent of the
objects, utterances, and stylized facial expressions. The
internal structure of a manipulation is precisely delineated by a
slight, but noticeable, pause after the completion of each
action. The spectacle as a whole at times receives a final
punctuation with the performance of a stylized "thank
you" to the audience.

In his work Sherman does not assume a fictional
role. His is a theatre of objects and his function is to
manipulate those objects, not to create a character. All personal
expressiveness becomes subordinate to the structural clarity of
the manipulations. His dress is simple, dark and unassuming. He
is mostly silent and deadpan, and any utterances or facial
expressions are performed without affect. His gestures are
precise, controlled and extremely rapid. By suppressing his
individuality in his performance style, Sherman comes close to
making his body just one object among many, although, unlike the
others, it does persist through the entire performance and
uniquely has the ability to act independently on the other
objects.

A relatively simple manipulation, from the Seventh
Spectacle, utilizes a footstool and two small books. The
performer gathers the objects from the side, places the stool in
the performing area, and places one of the books open on the
stool. He walks away from the stool, carrying the second book. He
returns to the stool, sweeping the book off with hand. He sits on
the stool. He takes the book in hand, extending arms forward,
with one hand on each side of the book. He drops the books,
maintaining hands in position. He brings hands together. He moves
hands forward, covering face. He falls forward to the floor,
maintaining hands over face. He rises, gathers the objects and
returns them to the side.

The formal structure of this manipulation is
clear. It begins with placing of the stool and ends with the
punctuating action of the performer's fall to the floor. Between
these parallel actions, the manipulation is constructed of
several other parallels: placing the book and sitting on the
stool; holding two hands and two books in front of his face;
dropping the book and falling himself to the floor. The
manipulation as a whole is framed by carrying the objects from
and back to the side.

This manipulation, as do they all, has the
character of a performed hieroglyphic and thus almost demands a
reading. It is itself a representation of the act of reading. The
series of parallels between the body, its parts, and the books
indicate an identification of the books with the performer: in
the act of reading, the book and reader become one. This acquires
an implicit eroticism as the hands-become-books touch the face.
The surrender of the reader to the text is indicated by the
covering of the face which precedes the fall: the external world
becomes dissolved in the purely subjective union of book and
reader. The fall in this context has an orgasmic quality which is
confirmed in a later spectacle, "The Erotic," where the
act of reading is explicitly identified with orgasmic experience.
Because the manipulation is itself a kind of text, it might be
read as a referential representation of the audience's attending
to itself in the act of interpretation of the spectacle.

-II-

To `make a spectacle of oneself' is to make
others attend to one, to present oneself to the world in a
particularly conspicuous manner, usually impling a false or
exaggerated pose. Throughout history theatrical spectacles have
been criticized for the ontological deceit of such performances.

In his performances, however, Sherman avoids the
projection of illusionistic persona. In his suppression of
personal expressiveness, however, he seems to be avoiding the
manifestation of any personal identity, fictive or
authentic. In the manipulations, the idea-structure is very clear
but the personal presence of the performer is far more
ambiguously defined. The body and its parts take on the status of
abstract signs, simply standing for ideas, at time the very idea
of the body. This conceptualization of the performer's body
becomes most apparent when stylized facial expressions are
performed: the schematic character of these gestures subvert
emotional empathy and simply allow the emotion to be read off the
face. Sherman's performances have at times been called robot-like
and this association is occasionally reinforced by the use of
small toy robots in the manipulations. Sherman has
instrumentalized his body into an object for the representation
of abstract ideas. It might seem, then, that Sherman is more
denying than making a spectacle of himself.

Sherman, however, claims that his performances
are manifestations of himself. Commenting upon the stylized use
of his body, he remarks: "The way I move on stage is the way
I would like to move at all times." He notes that he
performs out of the belief that there is "an obligation to
show each other who we are." When asked what would be
missing from his life if he did not perform, he notes "I would
be missing from my life . . . ." Sherman thus does not
perform to present fictive identities but to directly evidence
his own self.

A central paradox of Sherman's work is here
disclosed: how can such an evidencing of the self be accomplished
through a performance style that seems to deny personal presence.
For Sherman's statements to be accurate, his most authentic self
would somehow have to be disclosed within an apparent absence of
a self.

-III-

There is in the "Eighth Spectacle,"
which consists of twenty- two performance portraits of personal
acquaintances, a manipulation that directly illuminates this
paradox. The portraits use none of the traditional techniques of
theatrical representation; he does not impersonate the subject of
the portrait but enacts an idea-object structure that abstractly
represents what Sherman claims to be the essence of his
experience of the person.

At the end of this spectacle, Sherman epitomizes
the paradoxes of his work by performing a self-portrait. Any
representation stands in for, and thus implies the absence of the
object represented. A performer, however, is present during his
performance. While enacting a self-portrait, therefore, the
performer must somehow, within the boundaries of his identity,
simultaneously stand before his audience as both present and
absent. This is particularly true where there is a claim on an
essential evidencing of the self. The paradox is hyperbolized
still further as Sherman's self-portrait reveals itself as being
about its own creation and as it re-enacts within itself the
moment of that creation. In his self- portrait, the paradoxes of
Sherman's work move toward a limit and, as a point of singularity
is approached, the nature of the work becomes disclosed.

On right table: cassette recorder, 3
cassette tapes, a white blow-out (horn with curled tip that
uncurls into long straight line when horn is sounded)

X, behind left table, holds pane of glass
over face (hole in front of mouth) and switches on cassette
recorder: sound of lions roaring. X gnarls fingers of right
hand and twice makes clawing-motion toward white blow-out,
then lifts blow-out and inserts it through glass-hole into
mouth. Switches off sound of lions roaring, picks up black
crayon and, on outside of glass, marks horizontal lines over
eyes, vertical line over nose, horizontal line (broken in
center by blow-out) over mouth. Sets down black crayon. Blows
into blow-out. It sounds, uncurls into long straight line,
curls back. X removes blow-out, sets it down. Switches on
recorder: sound of lions roaring. X gnarls finger of right
hand, twice making clawing motion in front of and toward face
behind glass. Reverses glass. Picks up colored crayons, draws
them across glass (leaving colored slash marks). Sets down
colored crayons, picks up gun, inserts gun barrel through
glass-hole into mouth, pulls gun-trigger (gun makes clicking
sound), sets down gun, switches off sound of lions roaring,
removes and sets down pith-helmet, sets down color-slashed
glass, picks up clear glass-pane and places it over face
(hole in front of mouth). Changes tape, switches on recorder:
sound of sheep bleating. Sets down glass, picks up monocle,
places monocle-string around neck and monocle in right eye-
socket. Regards, through monocle, "off" button on
cassette recorder, switches off sound of sheep bleating.
Takes one step back, drops jaw and widens right eye, monocle
pops out of eye-socket. Closing jaw and replacing monocle in
eye-socket, X takes one step forward, picks up black crayon.
Marks monocle (as marked first glass pane) with horizontal
lines (over eye-positions), vertical line (over nose-
position), horizontal line (over mouth-position). Then X
picks up gun with left hand, points at objects on table,
places blow-out in mouth, changes tape. X sounds (and
uncurls) blow-out and clicks gun five times. Switches on
recorder: sound of blow-out sounding and gun clicking,
repeated 4 times (followed by silence on tape). After 5th
horn-sound and gun-click on tape, X sets down gun, blow-out,
and monocle, and switches off silent cassette recorder.

An appropriate starting point for an
interpretation of this manipulation is its central moment of
transition, as the performer places a pith-helmet on his head,
assuming the identity of a big- game hunter. This identity lasts
only as the performer represents shooting himself. Thus, it is
Sherman (as subject) himself who is the `big-game', as is further
indicated when the performer (signifying Sherman) makes a clawing
motion with his arm. The shooting is an act of self-conquest:
after it a lion's roar is replaced by a sheep's bleating: a wild
self has become domesticated, ordered.

Such an ordering of the self is described by
Sherman the critical moment in his creative process when wills a
disassociation from what he considers to be his material self:

I don't think of making pieces. It's what
I do, but it's the result of developing strategies for
personal salvation, for escape from the intolerable, from
certain existential cul-de-sacs. For instance, I quite often
feel that I have lost my mind, that there is no mind, but
only a body. That I am locked into it to the point at which I
do not know what thought is, or I cannot manifest thought.
Then I, through a sheer act of brute will, create
thought-structures; but, beforehand, I have to activate the
faculty of thought, and to do this I have to believe in
thought itself. So that it's an act of faith that there is a
counterpart to matter, the ideal, the realm of the ideal.

The shooting represents an act of brute will that
prepares for a transition from a material to a noetic mode of
selfhood.

As represented, even the disordered self has a
capacity for thought and order: an idealized representation of a
face, a self, is drawn upon the pane of glass that initially
mediates between the performer and world. In its undisciplined
state, however, it can only experience disorder: claw-marks sully
the pane of glass and thus the experience of the world. The
nature of this lion- self is indicated by the impotent action of
the blow-out, which echoes the act and sound of a petulant child
sticking out his tongue. For Sherman, to confront the world
without disciplined thought is experience "chaos and
disorder."

After the self has oriented itself towards
thought, experience is ordered and clarified: the sullied pane of
glass is replaced by a clear pane, which in turn is replaced by a
monocle, a lens which not only transmits light but focuses it
into a single unified image. The noetic activity further
increases self-control: instead of manipulating the cassette
recorder without consideration as earlier, the performer now
scrutinizes it through the monocle before switching it off.

This self-conquest is followed by a still further
movement into the realm of the ideal: the performer steps back
from an unrepresented event and indicates awe. The monocle drops:
this event is beyond even the focusing power of thought. Sherman
speaks of an experience of pure ideality as the ultimate source
of his work:

There is something, an invisible
something, that I try to place myself in relation to. I try
to place myself in the glare of its heat. It's as if you were
to try to approach the sun and get as close as you can to it
without being burned up.

He further notes that this experience is so
intense that he must return to ordinary experience after a short
time: the performer resumes his position and replaces the
monocle.

Sherman believes that this is an experience of a
transcendental order and that his work is a medium for this
order:

even though I created the pieces and they
have an order and logic to them, I cannot claim that I
created logic, or even the logic of my pieces. I simply
oriented my being and consciousness in such a way that I can
manifest logic and order. But I haven't created them. So
really my act of will is just a limited act of will; it's
just a question of orientation, self-orientation. And once I
orient myself in that situation, logic and order, you might
say the forces of logic and order, take over. I just
surrender to them.

In the manipulation, the surrender leads to a
further self- transformation which is represented by drawing an
ideal face on the monocle. This parallels the earlier drawing of
a face on the glass pane of the undisciplined self, but while the
glass only transmits experience, the spectacle can act to
concentrate that experience into a focused image. The ordered
self's image-making capacity is an image of the creative self of
the artist.

For Sherman's art is based on the complicity of
the artist in the forces of order; he imposes thought on inchoate
matter, in his own work by contexting objects into
thought-structures. Imposing self-order was indicated when the
performer shot himself; the imposition of order onto objects is
here indicated by five times shooting those objects, the five
shots paralleling the five claw marks left on experience by the
lion-self. The energy of the undisciplined self has become
harnessed by thought: the claw becomes a noetic hand which can
manipulate objects into coherent structures. A fanfare on the
blow-out accompanies each shot, visually forming the image of
five long fingers, in a celebratory gesture of triumph; the
blow-out, an object most associated with New Year's Eve, now
indicates a self renewed by an act of ordering:

The work is creation itself, but then I
feel newly created. I think its incumbent upon us to
participate in the creation of the world, to feel oneself at
the center of creation.

The self-portrait represents Sherman as artist.
The objects ordered by the gun-shots, however, are precisely the
objects used in this particular manipulation; the piece thus most
specifically represents its own creation. This self-reflexiveness
is indicated by the echoing of the shots and of the fanfare on
the cassette recorder.

This echo, however, has another meaning. Sherman
does not conceal the cassette recorder from his audience; it is
present on stage among the other objects. With this denial of
illusionism, an attentive audience might reflect that the sounds
were recorded at that very point in time when Sherman, alone in
his studio, first created this manipulation. What had been
metaphorically represented from within the boundaries of the
manipulation now, with the transcendence of those boundaries,
takes on a literal meaning. We are, in a very real sense,
listening to an echo of the artist's creation of his
self-portrait.

Stuart Sherman stands before us on the stage, but
now we hear the echo of another Stuart Sherman, who must
necessarily be absent from this and every other performance of
his work. Yet this other Sherman, though always absent, pervades
with thought this image of himself, moving on stage with such
precise and controlled gestures, which is his representative to
our world. After the completion of the spectacle, the performer
moves backstage. Within this duplicitous self, the paradoxes of
Sherman's work begin to dissolve.

-IV-

Before each manipulation of a spectacle the
performer glances at an index card, presumably containing a list
of manipulations. Yet, if he can remember the complex
manipulations, he certainly can remember their order. Formally,
the act serves to clearly define the boundaries between the
manipulations, but more than this, the gesture represents the
performer receiving his orders from the absent creator whose
image he is. Like the cassette recorder, this act is placed
within the performance as a subtle trace of Sherman as artist, as
creator.

The disjunction between Sherman as performer and
as creator is most explicit in the self-portrait but its
structure pervades the work. In a literalization of the basic
theatrical act of acting out a script, the mechanical quality of
Sherman's movements on stage is understandable: the performer,
like the toy robots he manipulates, can only perform the
structures of his absent creator. The robot is an image of the
performer as the performer is an image of the creator and neither
exists in the work except as such an image.

As such an image, the performer must discard the
accidents of individuality to become a vessel for the order
imposed by the creator. Any gesture not entirely subordinate to
the structure, any movement not precise and controlled, any
flicker of arbitrary facial expression or distraction of clothing
or manner, would interfere with the imaging of the
thought-structures which are precise and must be precisely
embodied. In the self-portrait, the removal of the seductively
colored claw-marks represents a turning away from the seduction
of personal individuality and expression. In saying that he would
like to move in everyday life as he does on stage, Sherman is
aspiring to a live of embodied thought and order.

Sherman's major interest in this work is not the
particular manipulations, which serve only as traces of the
earlier process of thought: "You shouldn't identify with the
structures, but with the structure-making process. That's what is
essential."

This is explains why the spectacles consist of a
series of independent manipulations: each constitutes a
particular approach towards the process of thinking, but none can
in themselves fully instantiate that process.

What the self-portrait represents is not so much
Stuart Sherman as particular individual but that
"creator" whose essence is contained in the process of
thoughtful ordering. In "making a spectacle of
himself," Sherman is not so much his specific personality as
he is manifesting the human capacity for thought and ordering.
Stuart Sherman Spectacles, like the monocle of the self-portrait,
are instruments which help him focus raw experience, material
objects, into ordered structures. In making a spectacle of
himself, Sherman is acting as a public witness to thought.

-V-

Sherman's work embodies an aspiration towards
transcendental order, but it also recognizes the limitations of
such an embodiment. After each manipulation, the objects return
back to the chaotic pile from which they emerged and after every
spectacle Sherman presumably returns to a life which is not fully
thoughtful. In his self-portrait Sherman depicts a self defined
by a movement between various levels of participation in the
cosmic order; essential to that depiction is a return away from
order. The creative act, in fact, occurs not as the
unrepresentational order is approached, but only after the return
to the world. Art, composed both of ideas and matter, can only
exist after such a return to the material world.

Even within the creative process, the inchoate
materiality of the objects can never be fully transcended. The
fanfare of the blow-out is triumphant as the objects'
transformation is celebrated, but it also echoes the sound of a
Bronx cheer, acknowledging that the objects stand unchanged on
the table. In this magic-like performance, the transformation is
always mental. The objects may be rigorously contexted into an
idea-structure, but their physical presence resists full
assimilation into it. He notes:

I don't think an object is ever violated
in identity. I think that it is almost impossible to see an
object without contexting it... You take it into the
bloodstream of the mind... You assimilate it and change it
according to your make-up: mental, physical, emotional,
spiritual... But the object is always there, in its mystery
and plenitude.

The achievement of an ontological vibration
between object-as-idea and object-as-matter helped motivate
Sherman to stop making almost purely conceptual ideographic
drawings and to begin enacting performances using real objects.

There is a moment at the end of theTenth
Spectacle, Portraits of Places, when the performer,
having exercised total control for seventeen manipulations, lifts
up a dustpan and, with a celebratory ringing of a bell, allows a
gold scroll to extend from it, releasing five small balls which
bounce about the stage; as they come to rest in a random pattern,
the spectacle is over. This manipulation had described a
trajectory from a lost world of the past, St. Petersburg ( an
image, here imbued with a rich nostalgia, of the not fully
ordered experience standing before the revolution of thought), to
an abstract, ordered, world of the present, identified with Los
Angeles. The moment of loss of control is, the title indicates, a
representation of Eden. Here the return from order is not simply
a return to the world, but also a return to a ground out of which
all embodied structures emerge. Sherman has stated that the balls
represent possible new worlds which might now be created.

Kleist, in his Essay on Marionettes,
argues that grace is possible only for God and for puppets, for
absolute consciousness or for beings without consciousness.
Sherman's performances represent both: there is Sherman the
creator who, like God, is indicated by, but not within, the world
of ordered objects and there is Sherman the performer, who
aspires to a state of abject surrender to the creator, who
desires to be a puppet of his thought. Within the continual
vibration between thought and materiality, however, Kliest's
ideal of grace dissolves. Objects accidentally fall, the
performer often fumbles. In an exemplary moment during one
performance, Sherman cut his finger, his blood assimilating
itself into the piece as a trace of his material existence
outside of the idea-structures. The nature of this work is such
that such accidents, indications of the interplay between idea
and matter, order and chaos, thinking and moving, must be
accepted. However obsessed with order and ideality Sherman may
be, chaos and matter are an equally primal source of his work.

For Sherman, "making a spectacle of
himself" does not mean adopting a role but publicly
manifesting thinking. He has created a theatre of intricate
structure in which he can continually re-enact, in the privacy of
creation and in public performance, participation in the ordering
process and the inevitable loss of that order. It is this process
which he represents as his essential self and in his work Sherman
devises an arena in which he can enact that selfhood with a
particular clarity and exhibit to the world.